censorship

one of my questions about traveling to china was the amount of censorship. was i going to be able to stay up with international news? i had heard the bbc news website was blocked and i was worried about my favorite news source, the new york times. go ahead, call me a bleeding heart liberal. when i arrived, my worries were soothed quickly. nytimes.com was up and running, without any modifications at all. i could even access articles on china, which is more you can say for the bbc website. i am well connected, and very happy to be away from the american news machine.

this morning my dad sent me this image. (again, if you click on it, it's a little bit clearer.) it is a comparison of this week's newsweek covers between europe, asia, latin america, and the us. the first three headlines are "losing afghanistan", the last one is "my life in pictures" a story about annie liebowitz. very interesting. now, i'm no conspiracy theorist who is arguing that the government made newsweek change the cover in defiance of the first amendment. i'm a corporate news theorist. i believe in their quest to sensastionalize the news and make it play the way they want it, they are selling the average american (or whoever reads the news...) up the river. it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

now read this quick...i'm not sure how long the american censors will let it in to the united states. you know how they feel about bad news.

somebody doesn't like mao?

in my classes this week, we've been doing a bit of getting to know you stuff. more in fun as opposed to breaking the ice. we all know each other by now. so in this excercise you write 3 or 5 things down about yourself on a piece of paper, then you ball it up and throw it across the room. now i'm courting disaster here, but it's fun! you should see their faces when i ball up my piece of paper and throw it across the room. they are shocked. but they quite soon get into the swing of things.

after 30 seconds of a hailstorm of paper, i tell everyone to stop, and pick a ball up. then you read it to the class. you guess who the person is, than that person has to read.

number 3 of one kid's list was, i don't like mao. man, talk about courage--or stupidity. balls of paper were immediately thrown at him, and one kid glared at him very threateningly. i know i can't talk about politics, but i wanted to know why he didn't like mao. and for that matter, why they liked mao so much. either way, i'm just going to have to sit on my curiousity. maybe i can talk to him later.

justin's story

after class yesterday, i spoke to justin, the monitor of my sophomore 6b class. in class, we had written five sentences about ourselves, mixed them up, and distributed them throughout the class. everyone had to read someone else's and we all guessed who wrote which.

a girl read justin's. "i miss my old junior friends. i wish it was last year. i'm afraid i will never make any new friends." when no one could guess whose it was, justin eventually raised his hand. i was surprised. he seemed well spoken, smart boy, without any glaring social problems.

he approached me after class. he told me that last year he was in the experimental section of the school (think advanced placement). for some reason or another, he failed one of his finals and he was dropped down to a lower class. now a monitor, or head student, he was bitter about the conduct of the other students in his new class. "they swear, and they don't listen." he is lonely, but feels he can't make friends with people with such low standards. i suggested to him that, perhaps, after getting to know them, they wouldn't be that bad. he did not see that as an option. for him the only option was up.

"studying is the thing that makes me forget. i study and i am not lonely." before entering this school, he was a loner. his classmates in his junior class took him out of his shell, but now he is retreating back. by studying hard, he hopes to ace his exams, and hopefully make it back into the experimental classes, and back to his friends.

not the way i would go about it, but it does shed some light on the human condition in china.

the buses of chengdu

the moped, the bike, the rickshaw, the car, the car that looks like it should be a moped. all of these are wonderful ways to get around the city. i, however, am relegated to the bus. now it is possible to take a taxi into chengdu from where i work and live, but with a price 15-45 times expensive as the bus, that is saved for weekends when i am out later than the buses run. and do they run. the system is quite good albeit a bit confusing.

a few times during the day, the bus is a relaxed affair. you put in a single yuan (about an eigth of a dollar) into the receptacle, and you ride until you get off. the seats are comfortable, as bus seats go, and there are ads for gatorade featuring yao ming, that star of stars (almost everyone's favorite nba team here is the houston rockets). my favorite seat is on the right side of the bus, after the second door. it is a single seat bolted to the wheel well. you can put your feet up on the handrails by the door, and people seem to avoid that seat...perhaps because of the bumps. i lean my head out the window, even though a couple of giggling girls hot to practice their english told me it was dangerous. now i don't know about dangerous, but you want to avoid leaning your head out the window on the left side, as you are likely to be spattered with loogies of the bus driver.

spitting is an art in china. a unisex art. after hearing a massive snot gathering, you are as likely to see a woman as a man launch the contents of their sinuses into the street. snot rockets are popular here as well.

however, i digress. i sit watching the advertisements for new housing developments go buy, the scooters passing, being passed, then passing once again, and the massive amount of commercial establishments once we reach the city proper. it is a nice ride, when i am not packed like, dare i say it, a sardine in a can.the state of the bus usually more like this. i guess when you have 10.2 million people living in a city, the bus is going to be full most of the time. now you pay a single yuan and cram yourself into the cattle herd of humanity that has gathered at the front of the bus. now i recommend that you hush that fuss, and move to the back of the bus. for some reason, most of the standing crush resides in the front of the bus, and if you can make it past the rear door, there is usually much more space. people board with roll-on luggage, nothing but the clothes they are wearing, plastic sacks filled with what seems to be fertilizer, anything and everything. no chickens yet, but i'm waiting. they seem to travel mostly by rear of moped.

as for seating, people are very wary of the elderly and the pregnant. people will stand up and shout "qing zuo, qing zuo" (please sit, please sit) immediately whenever someone in either condition board. (there are many pregnant women about, this being a little more than 8 months after chinese new year and the winter festival.) i was standing once when a few people would not give up their seat to an elderly man, and the bus driver started shouting at them. eventually, younger but older man stood up, giving his seat to the man. clearly, the reason he had not stood before is because he thought someone younger should have stood first. i felt the same. kids these days.

but when trying to give your seat to a younger person, such as a more vivacious expectant mother, or a woman whose foot you just crushed, expect a bit of a fight. a simple single qing zuo won't do it. you have to plead with them to take your seat. if you say please sit enough, and ignore their cries of "it's okay, i can stand" (at least i imagine that's what they say) you will be able to get them to sit down. because of course they want to sit down, but they don't want to accept on the first offer. good ole chinese culture.

but it beats walking.

mistakes on the english map of china

as promised, my communist student, tang, came through. today, before class (yes, not even after class, before class!) i was presented with a copy of the anti-secession law in english. one country, two systems. i was also provided a white rabbit, which is like a tootsie roll, except made out of the same cream filling in bull's eyes. i was worried that my democratic tendencies seemed to be up for sale for delicious treats, but i decided it was just a gift.

after class, tang informed me that the english map of china that he gave me last week was incorrect. the english map said that qumanglang feng was the tallest mountain at 8848 meters high. in fact, qumanglang feng was the tallest mountain at 8844.48 meters high. the discrepancy had not bothered me by that point, but there is no doubt it would have eventually. what really bothered me at this point was that he had spent time scouring both maps simultaneously for mistakes. i decided that this couldn't be the case, and this fact had been found out some other way. either way, i'm reading up on the npc's decision, and i'll get back to you about how i feel.

site change

tom dibblee makes me want to be a better blogger. he's got pictures, links, everything. he is driving me to step it up a bit. (that means pictures and links.) soon, hopefully, i'll be up to no loitering standards.

i have also found out that frogs has a blog too. kudos on the friscalating dusklight, my friend!

more soon. check out the new links, and the lack of china in the title of my blog.

and my new hidden blog, subconscious bick.

a trip to the tibetan quarter (pt. ii)

i went inside. xizang fengqing wu is a small place with 6 different rooms. the host gestured for me to seat myself. i went through the first open door and found myself in the presence of another waiguoren. i said "ni hao" and sat down. we did not speak.

note: all the waiguoren i've met (including myself) act the exact opposite of the chinese when they see a westerner. instead of staring, we ignore. we want chengdu for ourselves, unsullied by other visitors.

i sat down, and ordered a few dishes. a few minutes after i ordered, at the door from our dining room to the street, a man hit two metal sticks together, making them ring, and said something to the two of us westerners in chinese. i said i didn't understand, and the other westerner told me that the man wanted to clean my ears. at that moment, the man produced some wicked looking metal hooks (they looked like dental picks) with cotton swabbing wrapped around them. i said "bu yao" don't want very quickly. [bu yao is something everyone should remember when traveling to china.] i used the opportunity after the ear cleaner left to apologize to the westerner for intruding. he told me that i was speaking nonsensically, and told me why he was there.

he was canadian, his children were grown, and his wife was ill with a stomache, which explained his solitary position. he and his wife owned a boat that was now in malaysia. they had set sail ten years ago from the north american continent. it was cheaper to live in asia, so they were spending their retirement here. they were in the middle of a year traveling through china, to lhasa, to kathmandu, to etc. etc. etc. needless to say, i was jealous. but then again it seemed he was a bit jealous of me. the grass is always greener.

my food came. i had ordered yak meat dumplings, droma ("a sweet root vegetable") [someone later told me it was ginseng, but i'm not sure about that.], and milk tea. i think the yak tasted better just because it was yak. the droma came with sugar, which i shook on sparingly. it had a taste between a sweet potato and a red bean, and was quite grainy. the milk tea was delicious, and as i stood to go, i realized i hadn't finished all of it. while i stood, i poured the rest of it in my cup, and drained it, college style. ahhh. the good ole days.

i turned to leave, and realized the canadian left while i was eating ninja-style, without even saying goodbye. perhaps it was just that he couldn't be heard over the sound of my epicurian enjoyment.